Let's
Put On an Art Show
Oakland gets an art district the old-fashioned way -- no grants or city
funding, just elbow grease and vision.
BY MELISSA HUNG

From the Week of Wednesday, January 1, 2003

Jen Loy and
Nicole Neditch sit down at a rickety '50s-era chrome table in an empty
storefront on Telegraph Avenue. It is early morning and the building lacks
heat, but the two couldn't be happier to sit in the cold. They are on
the verge of beginning a new chapter in their lives, that of cafe-owners.
They hope that when Mama Buzz cafe opens this month, it will become a
clubhouse to Oakland artists, the kind of place where ideas flow as fast
as the coffee.

When it come
to the arts, Oakland can't seem to shake the perception of playing second
fiddle to San Francisco. But Loy and Neditch share pride in Oakland. "We
live here," says Loy, 29, who sports a pseudo-Mohawk that's frosted bright
pink at the tips. "This is where we create and explore our lives."

Perhaps the
ultimate irony of the Bay Area arts scene is that a great number of artists
call Oakland home, but few can make a living here because of the city's
long-standing lack of venues. Luckily, in the past year, a handful of
space-starved artists took matters into their own hands.

The stretch
of Telegraph where Mama Buzz will open its doors is emerging as the closest
thing to an arts district that Oakland has ever had. Boarded-up buildings
dot the gritty neighborhood around 23rd Street and Telegraph, but the
area is steadily undergoing revitalization -- thanks mostly to the Korean-American
businesses that have taken root, but also to artists who moved in.

Four years
ago, painter Tim Martinez found the defunct Mexican restaurant that he
gutted and transformed into Papa Buzz cafe. Last year he sold the business
to fellow artist Ivan Blackshear, who turned the adjacent storefront into
Door 7 Gallery. Loy and Neditch were looking for a place to house meetings
for their latest passion, Kitchen Sink magazine, an independent culture
magazine whose second issue hits the stands next month, when they learned
that Blackshear was selling.

Mama Buzz
is just around the corner from 21 Grand's new, bigger digs, which opened
in March following problems at the nonprofit art organization's eponymous
location. The cafe also shares a back lot with Ego Park gallery, which
is not so much a gallery with regular business hours as it is a studio
for Aisha Burnes' graphic design business and Kevin Slagle's art.

"We know
a lot of talented people who don't get shown," Burnes says. So the two
started installing visual arts shows roughly once a month. Operating on
a by-the-seat-of-your-pants manner, they have showcased an eclectic sampling
of local talent, including photography, experimental music, and video,
generating a fervent following. When Ego Park hosted the Kitchen Sink
launch party on November 15, some three hundred people crowded into the
space; others were turned away.

Crowds also
converge on the Black Box Theater and Gallery, three blocks south from
Mama Buzz on Telegraph. Just over a year old, the midsize theater had
a banner year, showcasing everything from Tuvan throat singing to poetry
slams.

None of the
art spaces planned to open up so close to each other; it just happened
that way. Slagle first obtained the studio space in 2000. Though it was
the tail end of the boom, the rent was cheap because it had sat empty
for roughly twenty-five years. (Slagle heard it used to be a brothel.)
Gifted in the ways of woodworking and sheet-rock making, Slagle renovated
the space himself, which took a year. Easy to miss from the outside, with
a plain white door that lacks a handle and adequate signage (there's just
a sticker), Ego Park's interior is tastefully minimalist and stylish.

Adam
Rompel followed the same formula to open Lucky Tackle gallery, located
on San Pablo Avenue, near the Goodwill store. He snatched the space up
for about fifty cents a square foot in 1999 with two other artists to
use as studios, overhauling the space themselves. When the other artists
left, he opened it as a gallery. The name is all that remains of the former
tenant.

"I
think artists get frustrated with the lack of venues to show work and
so they start their own," he says.

Lucky
Tackle's inaugural exhibition was in July. Rompel is devoted to conceptual
art, to ideas over material. Not exactly an easy commodity to sell, but
because the rent is low, it allows him to take those risks and push the
artistic envelope.

But while
Lucky Tackle doesn't get much foot traffic, other new spaces try to cultivate
a homegrown approach. Ching-In Chen of the Brown Fist Collective opens
the first floor of her house, near the Oakland-Emeryville border, once
a month for public events, inviting all her neighbors to participate.
The part-time venue, dubbed the Speakeze, plays host to a variety of events,
such as film screenings and spoken word.

Another community-oriented
arts group, the Black Dot Artists Collective, found a new home this October
after being evicted from its original cafe and performance space in 2000.
In the two years in between, the organization helped start the East Side
Arts Alliance, a collaborative that provides art classes for youth in
the San Antonio neighborhood.

The Black
Dot on 23rd Avenue provides a place for teenagers and adults alike to
express themselves. A wooden rack on one wall offers CDs by independent
musicians. Marcel Diallo of the collective recently installed a neon sign
that reads "News" outside and says he plans to carry black publications
from around the country.

The small,
narrow rental space is just temporary though, Diallo says. Ideally, the
collective would like to purchase a whole building along with East Side
Arts Alliance and create a block-long cultural district with many different
groups.

"This is
like a way of keeping our vibrations out there," Diallo says of the current
performance space. "When we were evicted, I had a shift in consciousness
in terms of renting and owning."